Page 68 of Wilder

Wilder grinned as he went to the bench to swap his boots for his skates.

“I got us costumes,” Lexi said as she rested her arms on the top of the boards. “They should be here tomorrow.”

“You didn’t have any trouble finding good ones?”

“I don’t think so, but we’ll only know for sure once we get them and try them on.”

With his skate laces tightened comfortably, Wilder made his way to the entrance to the rink, then removed his guards before stepping out onto the ice, hockey stick in hand.

Lexi skated backwards away from him, hands on her hips. “I see you brought your prop.”

“I certainly did.” Wilder put the blade of the stick on the ice, then pretended to skate with a puck, dashing around Lexi and taking off down the rink. When he circled back to where Lexi stood watching him, he said, “I couldn’t trust you to bring one for me.”

“Rightfully so,” she said with a grin. “Ready to get to work?”

Wilder nodded, leaning on the stick. “What do you want me to do?”

“I’m going to walk you through the whole thing, then we can figure out if it works for you.”

Wilder moved off to the side, watching her as she turned on the music, then began to skate. He’d watched some of her competition programs on YouTube, but this was different.

This program was lively and fun. And he could see on her face that she was enjoying herself. Smiling, she went throughdifferent steps, but nothing too difficult. Wilder thought he could do it.

When the music ended, she skated to a stop in front of him. “So, what do you think?”

“Amazing! That was great.”

“Now your turn,” she said. “And I’ll add in my parts as we go along.”

Without turning the song back on, she had him mirror her steps. It was slow going, but thankfully, she was very patient with him and didn’t get upset with him when he made mistakes.

His natural inclination was to joke around, but it only took one look from Lexi to get him back in line. She was definitely all business, even though the program itself was fun.

He hadn’t put much thought into how difficult figure skating could be, even on the simplest level, like their Santa program. Hockey was more about speed and adaptability—both of which he was pretty good at—but not a whole lot of finesse. Lexi was alllllll about finesse, however. Even for the simple steps.

The first part of the program, he skated alone with the hockey stick, moving down the ice like someone had passed Santa the puck. Then Lexi joined him, taking the stick from him and leaving it against the boards as she circled around him, though the actual plan was for one of the elves to take it from him.

At her instruction, he reached out and took her hand. She wore thin gloves, but they didn’t interfere with her grip.

At her direction, he lifted their joined hands above her head so that she could spin in circles. Then they moved into the waltz position, with his hand resting lightly on her waist and hers on his shoulder. They kept several inches of space between them asthey skated around the ice, which was good because he didn’t want to get his skates tangled up with hers.

The song wasn’t really a waltz song, but they kept to the rhythm of it as Lexi skated backwards, letting Wilder guide her around the ice. They did some more twirls and simple spins, then she had him go down on one knee while she sat on the other, both of them lifting opposite arms in the air.

It was the perfect ending pose for Santa, who was known for having people sit on his knee. So it was only natural that he’d have his wife do that.

It was nice to have Lexi close, but he tried not to focus on that. It was just part of the program. It was all an act.

When Wilder heard clapping, he looked over and saw Kayleigh and Hudson standing at the boards. Helping Lexi onto her feet, Wilder got up and gave his sister and her husband a bow.

“That looked like a lot of fun,” Kayleigh said as Wilder and Lexi skated to the boards.

“I’m impressed that you managed to get a skier to do so well on skates, Alexandra,” Hudson said.

“Hey, I’m multi-talented,” Wilder said. “I can ski. I can skate. I can do a lot of things.”

“Are you going to skate the program just once on the day?” Kayleigh asked.

“I wasn’t sure about that.” Lexi rested her arms on top of the boards. “Maybe we could skate it once every hour? Like at the top of the hour?”

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